1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an airflow deflector apparatus for a vehicle that has a flap portion provided in front of a wheel housing of a vehicle, and in particular, relates to the airflow deflector apparatus for a vehicle that forms airflow in a direction away from rearward components while reduces drag.
2. Description of the Related Art
An airflow deflector apparatus is known that has a flap portion that faces a front side of a vehicle and is provided in front of a wheel housing that houses a wheel in a vehicle such as an automobile. Such a flap receives airflow from the front and then laterally or downwardly redirects the airflow in order to prevent the airflow from striking the wheel and other rearward components at or close to a right angle, thereby reducing drag of the whole vehicle.
In redirecting the airflow as above, since high efficiency is achieved if a front portion of the flap has a planar shape that is perpendicular to the airflow, most of related art uses flaps that are formed so as to have substantially planar shapes.
However, when the flap has such a shape in plan view, drag caused by the flap itself increases due to the airflow striking the front surface of the flap in a substantially perpendicular direction. As a result, an effect of reducing drag of the whole vehicle is diminished.
For this problem, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2008-13013 discloses a tire deflector as an airflow deflector apparatus disposed in front of a wheel housing. The tire deflector has a horse shoe-like shape in plan view, which is a convex shape extending toward the front side of the vehicle.
Although the above-described related art airflow deflector apparatus reduces drag caused by the airflow deflector apparatus itself, a direction of airflow at each end of the airflow deflector apparatus is substantially parallel to a flowing direction of a relative wind. Thus, it is less likely to obtain an effect of redirecting the airflow in order to make it difficult for the airflow to strike a wheel and the like.